Category: Finished Series: Action

Deadman Wonderland – 02

by psgels, posted in Deadman Wonderland



This show is crazy. It’s complete purgatory. The creators here take a boy, give him convenient excuses not to die and then proceed to torment him completely, while also making sure that he doesn’t get insane. This is like taking candy from a little kid, only to repeatedly kick it in the groin afterwards.

The convicts are pretty much labelled as criminals and this gives the creators the excuse to pretty much toy with their lives, like a very persistent sadistic cat. This episode was just completely brutal: here the prison simply sends about sixty people on a obstacle course, and how many of them survive it? Five? And heck, if that wasn’t enough, convicts have to gather an ungodly amount of money every three days in order to be able to survive. If you just win one such race, then you’re only safe for three days. How many convicts are there in Deadman Wonderland anyway, for them to be able to kill off everyone so indiscriminately? Based on these rules you’d figure that 95% of the convicts just dies off in just three days.

So yeah, the balls of the storyline is the main reason I’m blogging this series. Sadistic prisons have been done before, but not this crazy. It doesn’t even matter that it doesn’t touch upon prison rape (at least not beyond threats), because there is more than enough wrong with this setting as it is. This kind of openly endorsed bloodbath.

And yet, this is a series in which a fourteen year old kid can knock out a former taekwondo Olympic medallist with a mere plastic ball. That’s one of the two main problems with this series: the creators needed to do something in order to prevent the main character to just die off after five minutes. Even IF he is special, he’s also weak, and yet some of the things he does are just meant to give the writers the excuse to remain on track. This total lack of build-up of suspense of disbelief is one of the two major pitfalls for this series.

The second pitfall? The length. Seriously, this needs a second season to really work.

As for Manglobe, I’m afraid to say that the animation still doesn’t live up to their usual standards. The animation is decent, but nothing like the standards they set for themselves, with a lot of still frames, uninspired character designs (for their standards of course) and the voice acting also could be better. It’s a show that can go anywhere at this point, sand I’m interested in where it’ll end up at.
Rating: * (Good)

X-Men – 04

by psgels, posted in X-Men




This episode had two action scenes. And BY GOD where they excellent! This episode had a number of some people from the animation team of Birdy the Mighty Decode on it, and it really showed. The X-Men is a perfect series for these people to show their talents. These scenes were raw and brutal, and drawn with a ton of force and movement. Definitely the best action scenes of this series yet.

The last episode left me rather disappointed by that “fluids”-guy, but at the very least this episode really gave him a great action scene to close off. But Wolverine’s aerial fight against that flying mutant was awesome as well. More episodes like this, please!

As for the story, that also was quite neatly developed further, when Emma Frost of all people turned out to have a second mutation. The creators made good use of the fact that that one bad guy didn’t show himself in keeping the suspicions around her. These mutants with this second mutation are at the moment far more interesting than the U-Men, but let’s see what this series can do when it starts to develop these people in its second half.

Oh, and I also cracked up at Wolverine playing snooker.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Tiger & Bunny – 03

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



Three episodes in and I must say that this series is making good use of its time. The past two episodes have put some good effort into developing the dynamics between the two lead characters and didn’t make them as cliched as they could have been. The previous episode was meant to set everything up, while in this episode they’re already changing. This holds great potential for the rest of this series.

The same goes for the setting: instead of doing random crimes each week, the creators make sure to make all of them count. The monsters and villains perhaps aren’t the most complex, but they each do their job of focusing on a different part of the setting. In this episode it was the boundaries of film crews, and how far people can go to capture exciting footage. I loved the twinkle in that director’s eye when she saw this opportunity to film two heroes diffusing a bomb in their spare time

As for the CG in this series, it’s obvious that the creators did not put in effort to make them blend in with the rest of the animation, but at least the creators are consistent: characters drawn in 2D area always in 2D, and 3D always remains in 3D. This is better than having animators randomly switch to 3D models that suddenly look completely different. Plus, the rest of the animation has quite a bit of movement in it, so for now I’m not too bothered by it. I’ve definitely seen worse.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Ao no Exorcist and Deadman Wonderland

by psgels, posted in Ao no Exorcist, Deadman Wonderland, Some Quick First Impressions

Ao no Exorcist

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the son of a demon.
So, this turned out to be Shikabane Hime without its subtlety and without the girls. It’s definitely very shounen, even for the usual standards of the Prime Time Anime of the season, but it definitely has its good points. While it’s definitely aiming to be the epic of the season, it also can be quite charming when it wants to (that scene with the little girl and her father in particular was done really well). The characterization is also pretty good as well: the lead character looked like a moron on the promo art, but he’s surprisingly normal throughout most of this episode. That of course also has its disadvantages, most notably the way in which this episode started with him meaning well, but causing trouble at everything he does. Those kinds of scenarios are really getting old now, but at least this episode put more meaning into those scenes than just wasting time or going for cheap laughs. Oh, and the good news is that according to ANN, this will be 24 episodes. That’s definitely good news because 12 would not have fitted this story.
ED: I like the concept of a car driving across a highway, but the vocals remain cheesy.
Potential: 75%

Deadman Wonderland

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is sent to prison for a bunch of murders he didn’t commit.
Okay, we’ve found our horror seriers of the season. Seriously, that was intense. The majority of this episode was pretty much nothing but the creators doing everything in their powers to torment an innocent fourteen year-old boy. This definitely wastes no punches; heck, it delves into the bizarre, just to be as disturbing as possible. This show is definitely not trying to build up suspense of disbelief, which could hurt it in the longer run. The prison that the lead character ends up in in particular is just completely crazy, based around some rules that would normally cause a complete outrage and I can only imagine the deranged sociopaths that actually created it. But at the same time that’s also one of the potential strengths of this show. It may not have an ounce of subtlety, but this episode definitely was very creative. It has both huge flaws and huge strengths, so this really can go anywhere. Provided, of course, that twelve episodes are enough. the length will probably be the single biggest pitfall for this series.
ED: Unfortunately this is just a boring composition. Does not fit the dark mood of this show at all.
Potential: 80%

X-Men – 03

by psgels, posted in X-Men



The big question right now is whether or not that new character will go down the Mary Sue path: will she be a stable addition to the cast or will she completely take over the show with her powers? As a teenager, she doesn’t really fit amongst the characters of this series, but if she just remains in her role as victim who needs time to learn how to control her powers, then she’ll be a good addition to the plot.

Thanks to these cliches this episode was the least interesting X-Men episode so far. As build-up it should be fine, but at the same time this pace should not continue onto the next episode. Still, Emma Frost is a good addition to this cast, and she did a good job of being not obvious whether she was lying or telling the truth about having nothing to do with Jean’s death. That’s a nice thing for later on.

The most disappointing of this episode was the silly bad guy, though. He looked so cool, yet when he actually started fighting he completely lost control for no reason. I mean, Wolverine’s villains were also quite simple, but at least all of them kicked ass and were threatening in a fight.

Which brings me to the one thing that Wolverine did better than the X-Men: it had a convincing villain. Shingen perhaps was a bit too cool at times, but he stood apart, was a force to be reckoned with and he always had his presence. The bad guy here though… the U-Men still haven’t convinced me whether they’re something special.
Rating: * (Good)

Tiger & Bunny – 02

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



Tiger & Bunny is the series with the most impressive big picture of the season: perhaps it doesn’t have a single thing at which it’s the best of the season, but it has a bit of everything and does a lot of things right: likable characters, original backstory, good action, the second-best soundtrack of the season (after Hyouge Mono, which was bound to have the best soundtrack of the season anyway), an excellent sense of action and yet it isn’t afraid to look at its setting with some depth in mind, despite the flashy colours.

The flaws so far are a number of overused cliches that pop up here and there, though they all remain minor. I’m referring tot he flamboyant gay, for example, or how in this episode the bully was one of those one-sided bullies who are just there to get a plot going. Oh, and the way in which we have a workaholic who has no time for his daughter. That last one is really nit-picky, though, because this episode provided enough hints at how the creators plan to give the lead characters’ relationship with his daughter a lot of time to develop. Plus, we have a main character who is old enough to have a teenaged daughter. How awesome is that? During most other seasons we should have been glad enough to have a show with a character in his early twenties.

This episode also toyed with some other cliches as well. For example, the lead character gets a new suit that he obviously isn’t used to. Of course the likelihood for him to screw up by not knowing the right buttons to press is going to be larger. I also like how neither the lead character nor his partner are forcedly put above each other: they both have their strengths and weaknesses and yet they’re surprisingly similar: they’re both short-sighted, just in completely different ways.

In terms of the setting, this episode gave quite a nice hint about how the superheroes evolved in this universe. The superhero that the main character ran into when he was young looked really crude. It probably was at a time when the NEXT only barely appeared, and he was one of the first to take up the role of being a superhero. My guess is that after this guy caught popularity, the entire business was commercialized, people got some budget for actually good costumes and entire trends were born, like turning that ice girl into a complete idol. I also love how this show criticizes mass media, but at the same time doesn’t completely label them as purely evil.

Oh, and regarding the soundtrack: Yoshihiro Ike is one of my favourite composers, alongside Hikaru Nanase and Yuki Kajiura. It’s because of that that I’m really glad to see him on another series again where his soundtrack really works. He’s really masterful at these subtle background sounds that do a fantastic job at creating an atmosphere, and the consistency at which he does this is stunning.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

X-Men – 02

by psgels, posted in X-Men




For the past years, I’ve always had a ton of trouble figuring out which series to blog. This time though, I don’t have that at all. I already have a very good idea of the 10 series that I’m going to blog this season, even though four of them haven’t aired yet. Seriously, there is a lot of good stuff in this season. First of all, X-Men. The show with the best character designs of the season.

Beyond that though, we finally get to see the real potential of the Marvel Anime. This was the calibre that I expected when Madhouse first announced this project. While Wolverine was a major step above Iron Man,the X-Men again are a step above Wolverine. All they have to do now is properly pace their story like Wolverine dd (with its admittedly far simpler story) and this will be really excellent.

This show just has a terrific sense of atmosphere. The build-up, characters, animation and music all contribute wonderfully to it. The drama around Cyclops can be a bit cheesy, but it does work at creating some necessary tension between the lead characters: not enough to get obnoxious, but enough to push them forward and make them more interesting.

The story so far is simple, but pretty effective. Innocent mutants being kidnapped: it works, and has the potential to develop into something interesting later on. I especially love how that one guy who was turned into a monster was draw. I don’t mean his monster form, but rather the moment where he actually died. The thing with this series is that the character designs are vastly different, and yet both the flamboyant main characters and the average minor characters: all of them look like a lot of time was spent on their designs, to make all of them unique. This is what really impressed me about these first two episodes.

What’s really refreshing about this season as well is that for once, teenagers aren’t dominating in nearly every series. Remember how during the previous Winter-Season, Wolverine was the only series that did not have a teenager as its lead character? Instead, we have multiple series here with lead characters in their twenties and even thirties. Yay for variety!
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Star Driver Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Star Driver




Out of all the series that premiered during the past Autumn 2010 season, Star Driver stood above the others, promising an epic mecha story; completely original, not based on anything and animated by Bones. It really looked to be the classic of the season. In the end though, that did not happen, but it still has enough to like.

It’s a series that combines school life with over the top mecha battles. It has quite a large cast of characters, all of which it tries to flesh out. And to be honest, it does a pretty good job there. Star Driver’s cast is fresh and dynamic, and the characters that do get the chance to show their stories are well fleshed out and interesting to watch. The school life moments make this a fun and cheerful show to watch, with a good balance between drama and light-hearted stuff.

Where Star Driver falls down is in its ambition. It both tried to have a huge story and cast, and tried to take its time and make this an enjoyable slow paced storyline. It just didn’t manage to do both and instead of focusing on one, both ended up a bit too unfinished. The story knows how to build up to to its final climax. In fact the final episode is excellent in how it brings a lot of build up from the entire series together. But at the same time there are a ton of plot devices that it never uses, the story is full of plotholes, and half the cast never gets its time in the spotlight, leaving them kindof wasted and especially making the scenes that focus on them rather pointless.

The nasty thing here is that tar Driver could have become an utter classic if it had more episodes. It’s good, but it has left a ton of potential lying around by not being able to focus on everything, and focusing on too many characters (even though it created a good reason for trying to do so). The mecha battles also get less and less interesting as time goes on. Both because in the end they serve no real purpose to the storylines, but also because of how they just get more and more repetitive.

So does that make this series worth watching in the end? I’d say that it does. It definitely has a great storyline and characters; it’s just not as good as what it could have been. The creators did succeed into creating a fun and original series to watch and keep you busy, interested and excited. Just don’t expect anything amazing.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Tries to do too much in too little time and ends up unbalanced because of it, but it still is able to write good scenarios and climaxes.
Characters: 9/10 – Takuto never really established himself as an excellent lead character, but there are quite a few excellent side-characters here. And the cast is very versatile just consistently interesting to watch.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Amazing looking mecha battles and soundtracks, with the animation outside of the mecha battles being quite good as well.
Setting: 8/10 – A bit incomplete, but it’s definitely inspired and original, and requires a lot of reading inbetween the lines.

Suggestions:
– Revolutionary Girl Utena
– Macross Frontier
– Baccano

Star Driver – 25

by psgels, posted in Star Driver



Ah, thank god this didn’t end with a downer ending. In fact, I really liked this ending and how over the top it was, and how it at the same time brought this entire show together. It’s not perfect, it had some flaws, but I still really liked this ending, and how this episode really showed how this series has been planning up to this episode

A lot of things became clear with this episode. First of all, if you leave his intentions aside, then Head is an excellent villain. He knew exactly what he wanted, and the entire series is pretty much just him, waiting for the right opportunity, along with the guy whose cybody allowed one to take over other cybodies having to wake up. All of his actions were carefully calculated to getting at this point, using everyone around him, only to drop them when the time is right.

Also, at the start of this series I remember that I really liked the way in which Cybodies only could fight once. Of course this went away as soon as the cybody recovery system was introduced, but the concept remained the same: every character only could get one chance to fight Takuto, unless they took the big risk of regenerating their cybody. That’s the entire reason why so many new characters were introduced over the series: fightig Takuto for a second time was very hard to do in this series.

In fact, hardly any cybody was ever regenerated. At least, up till this episode, where the libido was so high that it became much safer to regenerate. Interesting, if the creators actually failed to make this episode exciting, that entire plot twist would have failed. That’s definitely an interesting link between a self-fulfilling storyline here. And really: the action in this episode was excellent. You can really see that Bones were saving up for this episode.

At the same time, with this episode also Sugata’s actions make perfect sense. I really wondered what the heck was up with him in this episode, especially with how he seemed to have been built up as the major villain. Instead, he was the tragic character of this show: the character who needed to be saved. He too only acted when he needed to act, and therefore had no purpose in most of the storyline. His Cybody had a very specific part here, and because of his absence in any action he became a very weird character. Instead, he too was just waiting for the moment where he could activate Samekh again, in order to deactivate it, so that he could deactivate it again.

This waiting game was essential to this series. Remember how the creators intended this to be a show that combined mecha battles with school life? Having the main parties waiting, while having the people around them just goof off and stall for time is what allowed the school life to return throughout the entire series. It’s this that fleshed out the characters in this series so well, despite being a double harem in a setting that has already been horribly abused by anime.

Now, for the parts that definitely could have been done better: Head’s motives could have been less stereotypically evil. Oh, and the main star of this show, Takuto: he never really developed, did he? He’s actually one of the characters with the least amount of depth. He’s enjoyable, but all he ever does is kick ass. He too could have been more varied. That would have also made the battles in the second half a lot more interesting. In fact, most of the plotholes that this episode left open surround him: who is he? Why is he the only one who can transform? Why is he the only one to enter Level 3 at the start. I can understand how he breaks into Zero Time, because of how he came from outside of the island (another major theme of this show), but everything about his appearance seems just too convenient.

My big constructive criticism for this series is that it should have tried harder during the school life bits. It should have shown more characters, it should have shown even more sides to them. It should have put in some real effort to constantly flesh out all of the 22 drivers would get their purpose in the series. Right now it just feels like too many of them were just thrown in to get to that magic number of 22 (the number of characters in the alphabet that all of the Cybodies are based on).
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Hana-Saku Iroha , Toriko and Tiger & Bunny

by psgels, posted in Hana-Saku Iroha, Some Quick First Impressions, Tiger & Bunny

Hana-Saku Iroha

Short Synopsis: Our lead character starts working at an inn.
Before this series started, I thought that it would be just a simple slice of life series. As it turns out though, Hana-Saku Iroha is as much slice of life as it is a drama. this series made excellent use of its first episode, and it really did a lot in just twenty minutes, especially for a series that will be 26 episodes long. It showed the lead character before, and after she moves to her grandmother after her mother pretty much abandons her. It’s both light-hearted, but also already showed what a huge change in lifestyle the lead character went through. What makes this series especially great though, is how detailed it is. The entire cast is versatile, the slice of life is realistic, the dialogue feels very natural and inspired, and the animation is of PA Works usual high standards. This series is definitely interesting: its series are either really great, or not worth checking out at all. There’s hardly anything in between for me so far.
ED: Decent J-Rock
Potential: 85%

Toriko

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a straw hat and is a pirate.
No. No, no, no. They just didn’t do that. There must be some mistake. Did Toei really just use One Piece’s popularity to introduce the Toriko anime?! What the heck was Luffy doing there? What the heck was the entire One Piece cast doing there? Toei is known for their sell-outs and all, but this just takes the cake. It doesn’t even make any sense either: the One Piece cast just wanders off and runs into Toriko, with the rest of the episode just being people talking about food and eating. The One Piece cast was just… there. They were more obnoxious than helpful. And as for Toriko, the only thing it pretty much has going for it is its creature design. Seriously, I am no fan of Shounen Jump and all, but setting aside To Love-Ru, Toriko has to be the worst Shounen Jump anime I’ve seen in a long, long while and this episode showed that Toei has no intention whatsoever of making something good out of it. This was a terrible introduction, for a show that basically advertises poaching to young kids. Toei already have more than enough money. This is commercialization at its worst.
OP: “Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow?”
ED: At least the song is decent here.
Potential: 0%

Tiger & Bunny

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a superhero who fights crime.
This season rocks. I mean, for one: only four series have premiered so far, and already we have two of them that features main characters that are older than 30. Heck, the lead of Tiger & Bunny actually has a daughter; when was the last time that we actually had such a series? On top of that, I love the concept of this series, as a kind of semi-satire on modern mass media that’s focused around a program that exploits superheroes, complete with sponsors and everything. The action is excellent, combining both great stunts and nice humour, and it just keeps changing dynamically due to all of the different characters involved. Characters who already have all kinds of charms. This can make for a very interesting series, especially if it will go beyond 13 episodes. My complaint about it is that it does tend to overuse CG, and the director of the whole Superhero show was a bit of a stereotypical corporate bastard who’ll do anything for money. Apart from that, this was a wonderful episode.
OP: The OP is just a collection of boring still shots and a dull J-rock song, though.
ED: As excellent as the OST is, this is just another dull J-rock song.
Potential: 90%